


Foreigner Of Wind

by Aisranhou



Series: Matriarch of Wolves [1]
Category: Naruto, Overlord - Maruyama Kugane & Related Fandoms, 転生したらスライムだった件 - 伏瀬 | Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken | Regarding Reincarnated to Slime - Fuse, 鬼滅の刃 | Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Anime)
Genre: Author is so done, Gen, Mathematics, Mild Language Arts, Reincarnation, Science
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2019-12-26 19:01:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18288326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aisranhou/pseuds/Aisranhou
Summary: hmm





	1. Chapter 1

Sakura brought the music box to her, it was going to be one of those nights. Sakura could never sleep on these nights, not when she suddenly seemed to fill to the brim with energy. Restlesslessness kept her awake in bed, staring at the slanted ceiling of her Grandma’s house. Sakura counted the widening cracks in gray scrub-pine planks and then counted the seconds as they ticked by. Beneath her cotton nightdress, the metal laid warm and comfortable against her skin.

Sakura could not remember a time when she had no loved the locket. It had belonged to her grandmother once and then passed on to her mother. After that, it sat in her mother's jewelry box, until her father took it out one day, to present to Sakura on her 5th birthday. 

The locket was no bigger than the size of a walnut, an oval cut, made of an unknown material. A thin chain that loped onto the metal conned to the emerald green gem, allowed the gem to be worn around the neck like a locket.

The gem looked almost magical to Sakura because if you looked hard enough you could see the way it glimmered in the dark. Her father had exclaimed in surprise that he didn't know this kind of material and he asked colleagues if they had also seen this type of material. But there was nothing to find. 

With a shrug, he’d given the gem to Sakura. From that moment she had never taken it off; even at night, the gem lay against her chest as she slept. She held it now, clutched below her finger, a nervous habit. But seemed to calm her none the less. 

As to why she was restless, she doesn't know. This had been going on now for quite a while. She just couldn't sleep. She listened as rain fell and lightning reflected off the window of her bedroom. But even the storm couldn't drown out the conversation from downstairs. My parents were talking about business and what to make for dinner.

Sakura’s restlessness got the best of her and she swung her legs over the side of the bed, discarding the music box, crept towards the door on light feet and opened it a crack. Below, her father stood across from mother. Bother were preparing for dinner. 

Sakura opened the door a little wider, crept out into the hall, and sat, knees to my chin, along the stairs. Her favorite spot. Sakura likes watching her parents moving about, working around each other. Sometimes she would scare her parents whenever they finally turned to her. It was funny seeing the way her father jumped and the way her mother held her hands to her chest as if someone deeply offended her.

Sakuras' eyes closed. Her world swarm in darkness-content with the silence. She truly enjoyed these moments with her family.


	2. Chapter 2

Everything hurt. From the tips of her toes to the crown of her head. Even her hairs seemed to protest with each movement and she groaned pathetically. Sakura had always imagined that death would be peaceful. Maybe it had been something to soothe her, but she still remembered the way heart stopped on her chest when she saw the pale sword come shivering through the air. Sakura had met it with cold steel. Sakura remembered when the blades met, there was no ring of metal on metal: only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal screaming in pain. Sakura matched a second blow, and a third, then she fell back a step. Another flurry of blows and she fell back again. 

Behind her, to the right, to the left, all around her, the bandits stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the woods. Yet they made no move to interfere.

Again and again, the cold weapons met, Sakura was panting from the effort now, her breath steaming in the moonlight. 

Then Sakura counter came to slow. The pale sword bit through the flesh of her arm. The young genin cried out in pain. Sakura had held her hand to the slash, but no matter the pressure she applied the blood had still gushed between her fingers and oozed under her hand.

To caught up in her shock she was met was a harsh blow to the temple…

Now she was here. Where ever ‘here’ was. All senses on alert, her body vibrated with tension. In addition to the natural concerns about if her body would be able to fully function, just enough to escape if needed. A job that carried unacceptable consequences if it failed to. 

It wasn't until she heard the whispers and screeching that Sakura finally opened her eyes. There was darkness all around and she could hear a faint dripping in the distance of water splashing onto stone somewhere in the endless tunnels. Cold, hard rock pressed onto sore muscles, bruised and battered from her last fight against death which she had lost but also seemingly won. She was alive but knew that she was no longer in the forest of the village. She wasn't even sure if she was still in Konohagakure for the earth felt different around her, cold and empty, its energy exhausted as if it had been cast aside in this forgotten labyrinth of tunnels.

"Now look what you did," Sakura muttered to herself, her raspy voice echoing hollowly through the surrounding space around her. It sounded strange in her ears, foreign and old. Older than she had been before her supposed death, yet younger than she remembered being. "Couldn't do anything properly in life, you couldn't die properly as well?" And Sakura willed her limbs to work for her once more. She didn't get far, barely halfway upright, when she heard a sound different from her own harsh breaths and the dripping of water against stone. It was clicking and scratching which echoed around the tunnels in a way no human could ever hope to sound.

Sakura turned, her green gaze searching the surrounding dark, slowly getting adjusted to the endless night. A soft hissing, almost purring, the sound echoed through the tunnels behind her and, narrowing her eyes in suspicion, Sakura remained staring towards the tunnel for a few minutes/seconds to see if the sound would move away in any direction. It didn't, but it didn't disappear either so she relaxed her tense shoulders and focused her attention to where she was sitting. The uneven rocky terrain was remarkably carved, rough like it had been man-made rather than letting nature run its course. The walls seemed to shine dimly with, what Sakura presumed to be, water. Upon closer inspection, meaning shuffling carefully towards the stone walls as her muscles and bones protested against the movement, water wasn't the only thing that caused the stone to glow. It was like lines of pure silver that dripped from the cracks. No wonder there were rough hacks in the walls of the tunnels. Miners must have tried to collect it all, whatever the silvery stuff was.

While Sakura didn't know a lot about mining, she knew from conversations she had once with a few merchants that you could always hear anything in the mines, especially when they were active mines. Now the only thing which could be heard was her own harsh breaths and the odd purring sound that had yet to stop. It only seemed to grow louder. Whatever, or whoever, was making it was getting closer by the second.

Supporting herself by the wall, Sakura carefully willed her legs forward to move towards the sound. It seemed an odd and foolhardy thing to do, but she had remained a member of Team 7 throughout all these years. Lonesome or not, Sakura was always in for an adventure. Even the unwilling ones she was dumped into. 

The pain that was once sharp and burning now felt dull and distant. Cold shivers shot through her body and both her hands and legs were trembling. For a second Sakura considered listening to their body which was telling them to stop, to just give up and drop to the floor. 

Sakura grunted, determined to block out the pain and ignore the voices begging her to stop. Sakura told herself it'd be over soon, whether that was true or not was irrelevant as it gave her the necessary strength to deal with it nonetheless.

All she remembered were the smells of death and decay and sounds of desperation. The once beautiful landscape was transformed into a black crater, smoking and choking as if the earth itself was trying to cough up the disease which had seeped into its cores. 

Weak as always, smelling of blood and sweat, trying to find her way towards something which could lead her out of here.

"What's it doing, precious?" a voice hissed, the underlying purr identified as the sound which Sakura had been walking towards. The being, because it didn't sound quite human, hissed and coughed and sounded oddly like a sick cat. But at least Sakura could understand what it was saying. "Always wandering, always stumbling. Like a poor little lamb its stinking white coat already dirty and grimy. Better to be fish, for it will taste so nice."

Sakura froze in her movement, her harsh breathing sounding too loud in her ears for her comfort and her heartbeat hammering in her throat as if it were trying to leap away. For a moment she did not recognize the feelings coursing through her but then she knew… it was fear. Fear for the thing which was sneaking around in the dark.

A screech startled her and she pressed himself closer to the tunnel wall, the rough stone digging its way into wounds she hadn't noticed before.

"It sounds like a bird," the being hissed, seemingly edging closer. "It does, precious, it does! A young little bird has fallen from the nest. Will it have broken a wing or its feisty little neck. Not much meat on a little bird though, precious. No, not at all! But oh so juicy."

The last words were hissed so close that Sakura stumbled out into the open tunnel, falling flat on her face breaking her nose. She grunted in pain and squeezed her eyes shut before willing her body to turn and stare out into the darkness which surrounded her. Water splashed around her and the soft dripping which had been swallowed up by the purring voice returned with a vengeance. Something hovered above, its luminous eyes reminding him eerily of a house-elf before Sakura felt clammy yet strong fingers grip around her throat.

"Will it taste nice, precious?" the being hissed, its breath smelling of rotting fish. "Will it taste good?" But the being was soon distracted by another screeching sound that seemed to be coming closer. Fighting for breath as oxygen was sucked back into her longs, Sakura kicked the creature away, sending a shock caused by Charaka through the being. It screeched in pain and fear, jumping back and into the shadows of the caves with a hiss like an angry cat.

Sakura let herself drop back onto the hard stone floor, lights flickering as her vision returned and the numbing sensation in her limbs withdrew. As she lay there, listening to the screeching and crawling sounds coming closer, she knew that she would probably regret not moving at all but she was just too tired. Tired of people. Tired of being weak. She was simply just tired of living altogether. So as she lay there in the darkness, basically giving up on life as it was, she closed her mind. She pushed away thoughts that could tempt her into not giving up. Sakura let the creatures which roamed this piece of the Earth reach her, sniff at her and paw with their claws at her.

In one instance, one mad dash of fevered survival, Sakura resisted. Her muscles spurred on the actions of her limbs which seemed to move on their own accord. She whispered words, mad attempts at jutsu she knew would no longer work for her. But she tried nonetheless. The creatures fought back, of course, getting more excited the more she resisted capture, but they could probably tell that Sakura was too tired to fight. So they fixed her ability to kill their kin with a single word.

With a mad glee in their eyes which Sakura would remember forever, the creatures cut off her tongue.

 

When sakura came to she was conscious of her surroundings, though her body remained in a state of deep slumber. It was like her chakra - which seemed to be returning to her with each breath she took - was reaching all around her. It encased her body in a protective shell appearing as a thick air bubble in her mind's eye. At first, she didn't really remember anything. Not who she was, where she was or how she got there. But the longer she stayed in that state of suspension, the more she started to remember.

The first thing she remembered was the sound of water dripping onto the stone. The sound of a rhythm nature provided which seemed to align with her heartbeat. Second to that came the smell of air heavy with minerals, wet stones, and darkness. Not the darkness of everlasting dreamless dreams but comforting darkness which came from being under the earth, inside a mountain. Last, there was the feel of cool air rushing in and around her. It ruffled her hair in a comforting gesture like she had seen Kakashi do with Naruto and Sasuke. (Not her, never her). It blew across her naked body, cooling hot fevered skin and infected wounds which continued to bleed. And as Sakura breathed in the cool, comforting air she could almost taste the sun which it carried with it.

What is this? What is this place?

Something hot and wet rolled down her cheeks and for a moment Sakura twisted in her bonds, exhausted muscles protesting as blood were pumped through them again. Her eyelids fluttered and something screeched nearby causing the pinklet to flinch away. The screeching became loader and as Sakura flinched away again something cracked close by. Hot leather worked its way across her back, pain flaming in its wake. A grunt of discomfort left her before the darkness of everlasting dreamless dreams took her again.  
…

“Do you...desire power?”

Sakura wondered who this voice belonged to. Sakura felt the warmth and vague restless when she heard the voice. “Wheres my- Wheres your body?”

Sakura looked around searching for the owner of the voice. 

“I am a program, I am without form. And your body? It's out there. We are currently inside your mindscape.”  
“My mind?,” Sakura looked down and saw her hands. They seemed to flicker with her every movement. Panicked she patted down and examined her body. She felt relief flooded her senses: though they had the same results as her hands, they were still there.

This feels weird. This feels... wrong? No. New? Yes. This feels new.

Sakura focused on the voice, which was waited patiently for her to process these alien sensation. “Why am I here?”

In truth, sakura was only approaching this matter because she was bored out of her mind. She was bored sitting here in the dark where she frequently faded in and out of consciousness. These days it was too boring to endure. 

Of course, the other reason why Sakura was feeling suffocated was that she was completely and utterly alone. She didn't know where inner had gone. But sakura never really let herself train on that thought. IT hurt too much to train on the thought if inner was okay or if she were even still around. Sakura wouldn't put her self threw that, not on top of the pain she already was going threw. The pian consent but it dulled over time. And just when Sakra thought that she was going insane from loneliness and boredom, the voice showed up, making her so happy she could cry. 

“You died.”

Sakura jerked back at the response. “Im Pathetic not stupid, you know?”


End file.
